The present invention generally relates to electronic mail. More specifically, the present invention relates a method and system for facilitating retrieval of attachments attached to electronic mail messages.
In recent years, with the rapid expansion of the Internet and intranets, there has been a growing tendency to carry out tasks by preparing documents on personal computers in the form of electronic documents and distributing these documents to the relevant parties via electronic mail.
Since electronic mail can be used to send information almost immediately to a remote office and electronic mail transmission/receipt histories can be looked up relatively easily, electronic mail has become a crucial information transferring means in the creation and distribution of documents involving information exchange between multiple parties.
FIG. 3 shows a conventional process for creating and distributing documents using electronic mail. As shown in FIG. 3., a department or section head A first assigns responsibilities and sends a first electronic mail to both supervisor B and supervisor C. Next, supervisor B creates a document relating to his/her allotted task. This document is attached to an electronic mail that is then sent to section head A. Similarly, supervisor C also creates a document relating to his/her allotted task and attaches the document to an electronic mail that is then sent to section head A.
Section head A searches incoming electronic mail messages and retrieves the documents sent from supervisor A and supervisor B respectively. Section head A then reviews these documents and checks their contents.
In the method described above, the attached documents can be extracted only via their respective individual electronic mail messages, making retrieval and reuse of the documents inconvenient and difficult. In other words, an attached document cannot be easily located and retrieved without first identifying and opening its associated electronic mail.
The foregoing situation gets progressively worse as the number of electronic mail messages increases. As shown in FIG. 4, for example, a large number of electronic mail messages are received by section head A, including messages relating to other issues. If section head A desires to retrieve the documents sent by supervisors B and C, section head A must search for the electronic mail messages that are replies to the electronic mail messages previously sent to the supervisors B and C.
Typically, section head A may search for the relevant electronic mail messages by examining the sender identity and/or the subject field. This approach can also become tedious because there can be multiple electronic mail messages with the same sender and/or subject. As a result, section head A very often may need to check multiple electronic mail messages with attachments and look at their contents in order to be able to locate the desired document.
Furthermore, in a case where a document is created and distributed for comment and input to multiple supervisors, the supervisors may be sending revised versions of the original document. Thus, each of the attachment documents may need to be examined to check for consistency. This makes the process of looking up documents extremely complicated.
In order to be able to archive the attachment documents associated with electronic mail messages so that these documents can be reused at a later date, a predetermined folder is often used in a document management system to save and archive the relevant attachment documents.
A number of document management systems have been proposed that serve to efficiently save histories involving electronic mail. In one such system, the electronic mail messages sent and received by users are automatically captured by the document management system, which stores and manages the series of exchange of electronic mail messages based on the electronic mail transmission routes such as replies and forwardings. In this system, the electronic mail data that is to be sent and received by an electronic mail server is first received by a document server. The document server then determines whether the received electronic mail message is an electronic mail message that relates to a task (hereinafter referred to as task mail) for which data is to be stored in a database. If the electronic mail message is not a task mail, the message is sent to the target user without registering information relating to the electronic mail data into the database. If the electronic mail message is a task mail, the document server assigns an identification number (hereinafter referred to as a case number) that uniquely identifies the corresponding task history and registers it in the database. The corresponding case number is added to the subject field or the like of the electronic mail message in the form of string data. The processed electronic mail data is then sent to the destination user.
Subsequent electronic mail messages in which a case number referring to a task history is added to the subject field of the message are assumed to be additional information for the task history associated with that case number, and this information is registered in the database. More specifically, electronic mail identification information relating to the reply destination of the electronic mail message (e.g., Message-ID information in SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)) is used to extract reference information in the message, e.g., the electronic mail message to which this electronic mail message is a reply. This information is recorded as transfer path information that is associated with the task history.
In the system described above, a series of electronic mail messages transferred as replies and forwards are managed as a single task history which can be searched and viewed. This reduces the amount of time and effort needed to find electronic mail messages that are replies to document creation instructions assigned to supervisors. However, when the contents of an attachment documents is to be checked, the attachment document still needs to be extracted via checking individual electronic mail messages. In other words, in order to find an attachment document that needs to be checked, the contents of each electronic mail message must be examined one by one. Also, if responsibilities are assigned to multiple supervisors in the creation of a document, it may be necessary to check for consistency in each of the sent documents.
Hence, it would be desirable to provide a document management method that allows attachment documents to be looked up efficiently when documents are created through electronic mail exchanges between multiple users.